Utopian Circus

Chapter 9

  “What’s the matter?” asked The Pudgy Old Lady.

  “I feel weak. I can’t go on. Let’s sit for a moment” said The Fat Old Lady.

  As she spoke, her knee buckled and her left leg collapsed under the weight of her heaving upper body, proving the rule of gravity, falling in a heap to the soil below, holding her fingers clenched to her pudgy comrade and dragging her down with her. The two ladies fell to the ground like a bag of sand falling off a table. There was a sudden thud and then the fat of their bodies moulded to a new form, stretching out over their useless limbs to the ground below.

  “Your dress,” said The Pudgy Old Lady shocked.

  “What’s wrong with it? Is it uneven? Pull it straight would you” demanded The Fat Old Lady.

  “It’s, it’s…”

  “It’s what?” screamed The Fat Old Lady.

  “It’s gone,” said The Pudgy Old Lady.

  “What?” she screamed.

  The Fat Old Lady pulled her hands to her face and felt only the dried nerves exposed and tingling in the warm afternoon air. She quickly turned her sight to the floor pressing with her hands through the loose soil looking with her fingers for her skin dress.

  “Quick, help me find it. We don’t have long” she screamed desperately.

  She was right. The blood in her veins had already started to thicken and pump slower through her body and her nerves had already lost their feeling hence why she didn’t feel the air brushing past the bare exposed bones and muscle of her face. Her toes too were starting to go numb now. At first they felt cold and then they just stopped feeling all together.

  The sensation drifted up her legs until they were so heavy that they pinned to the earth and she could only heave from above her waist, turning in rampant desperation; shifting the earth with her hands, cursing the air, tears billowing from her eyes as the immediacy of her mortality snaked its way through her entire being; she, feeling every inch of her several million years.

  “Hurry” she pleaded.

  “Hu…” as she fell backwards in a heap, her lips frozen over; a rigid crevice leaking oxygen into her slowing lungs that felt more like they were filling with cement with every inhalation.

  “Eureka” yelled The Pudgy Old Lady.

  She gasped; her blood thinned, her muscles twitched, her toes moved and The Pudgy Old Lady smiled. The nerves on her face were attaching themselves once again to the skin dress being pressed down upon her.

  The Pudgy Old Lady pulled hard on the flesh accidentally making another tear but managing to attach all of the clips, holding it in place. She stood back, catching her breath and watching as the colour changed in her fat comrade, her dear friend, someone she wanted so much to be, and someone who didn’t have to take her under their wing but who did and someone she would give her own face to protect.

  “Dear, are you ok?” she asked afraid to touch her comrade who was twitching away on the ground; her stubby toes flicking about and even her huge belly, quivering like a mound of jelly being knocked about.

  The Fat Old Lady said nothing, she couldn’t for the moment. Her blood thinned and ran through the length of her body from her now floating lungs to the tips of her tingling toes.

  Slowly she was becoming younger again; returning to her immortality but there was a tear in her skin dress and because of this, she felt not as young as she had at the start of this chase; running idly through the forest after a naked man whose skin dress could do more than keep her young forever; it could make her special.

  “Never again,” said The Fat Old Lady, “I almost died. Never ever again. What took you so long to find my dress? I could have died any second. Do you know what’s it’s like to feel millions of years old? It’s not nice” she said angrily.

  Her pudgy comrade helped to lift her off the ground and onto her feet.

  “I’m sorry. I was going to give you my dress, but I thought you would hate to wear this ugly thing and I knew I could find yours and I did and aren’t you happy?” she asked sheepishly.

  “This is not a smile. You clipped the mouth to my ear, you nincompoop. It may look like I’m smiling I’m sure, but trust me I am an ocean away from the sea of content. Now we have no choice, we have to find this man. Come on. I really need that dress” said The Fat Old Lady.

  Her pudgy comrade followed willingly helping her along the thin track. She wanted so much to be just like her; to have her grace, to speak with her authority and to live as long as she had lived. It was such a wonderful feeling to want to be someone else. It made her feel light and special.

  The two old ladies continued their march through the jungle looking for a man dress to help make a fat old lady; the womb of god.